David Lim wrote:Thanks, I think the definition of "stative" at least is clear now. Unfortunately, I then do not see what exactly it implies in 1 John 2:3. I always read a perfect to mean a present state (in the real world) that stems from a past event, whereas the aorist simply points to an event, which is usually in the past.
Sometimes with the perfect either the present state or the past event may be less relevant than the other or even fade out like in οἶδα. If the present state fades out, it becomes very close to an aorist. If the past event fades out, it becomes very close to a stative present. Lexical study is important.
So I see no difference between "stative" and "non-stative" verbs in the perfect tense.
A state cannot be perfective in itself. If a state is depicted using a perfective form (aorist, perfect), the resultant meaning is a change of state, usually focusing on the beginning, even though sometimes the beginning and the end of the state may be in view. A dynamic verb does not get this ingressive meaning in the perfective. That's why the beginning of a state is expressed with an aorist (ingressive aorist) and the beginning of an action is expressed with an imperfect (inchoative imperfect).
If a verb is stative, it still must be localised in time, and therefore I understand the aorist as referring to the whole event regardless of whether it extends indefinitely, and the perfect as referring to the present state arising from the event in the past.
The change of state does not extend indefinitely. It is not part of the event. It is the consequences of the event or the resulting state that extends. In this sense the aorist can be quite close to the present.
Thus 1 John 2:3 conveys "we have known him even as we have been keeping his commandments".
Or "we have come to know him"
The aorist is not suitable as the author did not intend to say "we came to know him before", but rather "we have known and still know him even as we have been keeping and still keep his commandments". If you think that this is not what he means, can you provide a rendering of 1 John 2:3 with as accurate nuance as possible? Thanks!
I am not sure the aorist would have been impossible here, but anyway the author chose a perfect.
Likewise, I read 1 John 3:1 to mean "the world does not know you because it does not know him", where the aorist points to "the fact that the world does not know God", which is the reason for the present situation that "the world does not know you".
How about "the world does not know you because it has not come to know him" or "the world does not know you because it never came to know him"?
We can rephrase it as ει ο κοσμος εγνω αυτον και υμας εγνω αν αλλ ου γινωσκει υμας γινωσκομεν ουν οτι ουκ εγνω αυτον.
How about εἰ ὁ κόσμος ἔγνω αὐτόν, γίνωσκει καὶ ὑμᾶς or εἰ ὁ κόσμος ἒγνω αὐτόν, ἐγίνωσκεν ἀν καὶ ὑμᾶς?
If instead the perfect had been used, it would express "the world has not known him even until now", which is different. I hope I can see what an "intensive perfect" might mean from your rendering, because the linguistic terminology does not quite give a clear picture of the actual meaning to me.
I am not sure how different the meaning would be with a perfect. "The world does not know him as it did not come to know him" sounds like laboring the point too much, but it gives an idea of how the perfect might be used. The aorist here is not all that different because the context makes clear the present state of knowledge is relevant even though the perfect tense was not used. If you want to take the intensive perfect idea here, how about "the world does not know him"?